"Henry, please. That's counterproductive." Xavier shook his head.

The blue-furred man placed both hands flat on the desk and raised his head so his chin was just above the surface of it, his eyes blazing. "It relieves my emotions, and believe me, I need an outlet. Of all the potential fathers in the world…"

"And what precisely do you mean by that?" bristled Erik. There is nothing that says I must stay here and let him insult us both.

"What do I mean? What do I mean?" the Beast repeated. "I mean if you rescued the President's baby granddaughter from a burning building people would assume you engineered the incident in its entirety! You taint Ms. Engstrom by association. If a hint, a whisper, the merest insinuation of your relationship were to get out, everyone from the man on the street to the Supreme Court would dismiss her, and her case, as 'just another plot of that mutant-terrorist, Magneto'!"

"My amnesty—." Erik began. Taint her? He should ask her if she feels tainted. That's not the impression I got, either that night or earlier today!

"Your amnesty was granted based upon the inhumane treatment you received at the hands of Stryker. It forgives what you did, but it doesn't erase it from memory. And you were warned that you'd better keep your nose spotlessly clean!"

"I keep my nose rather cleaner than you keep yours, which, it seems to me, is turning a trifle brown!" Squealing sycophant!

"Oh." Hank growled. "If you're going to stoop to scatological insults, then let me say—."

The Professor interceded with a telepathic communication. 'This is precisely why I had Jean, Scott and Ororo take Ms. Engstrom around the school, so that the shouting might take place without her.'

Once he had their attention, he continued out loud, "Please, remember that when I get headaches, they're communicable. Henry, Ms. Engstrom's voices have told her to say nothing to anyone about the identity of her child's father—not even that he's a mutant."

"That is the first sensible thing to do in connection with that subject. The second is for her to sever all connections with him until the trial is over." McCoy stabbed a finger in Magneto's direction.

"You may tell her so, if you wish." Erik returned, icily, "but her voices are in favor of us staying together." Xavier's pup shall not part us. The voices know more than they tell. They know she is Maeve.

"Very convenient, these voices," the Beast grumbled.

"Considering that they saved her life last night, yes, they are." Magneto returned.

"Rather too convenient. I wonder precisely what is behind them." Hank glowered at him.

"Not I, I assure you." Erik matched him glower for glower. How dare he?

"Do tell." The Beast's voice dripped venom. "I don't believe it." Then his face changed. "Jean?" His face twitched in concentration for several seconds. "Call Vera? But…All right, just to prove my point."

He pulled out his cellphone, raising his eyebrows at the other two men. "A stuffed moose head in the attic just told Ms. Engstrom to tell me to call Vera now. Right now. Jean passed it along. Vera and I dated a long time ago. A very long time…" He punched several buttons on his phone. "It's ringing. No answer…Oh. Hello. It's Hank. Oh, no, no reason, I just…" He took the phone away from his ear. "She just cried out, 'Oh, God,' and dropped the phone."

"Wait." Professor Xavier said.

"Thank you, Charles." Erik said, touched. "I'll overlook your lack of support just now."

"As it happens, I believe Henry made some excellent points—even if he did express himself too strongly."

"Hmmm." Of course I did not taint her… not personally, and she's very happy about the baby… as am I, but if our relationship compromises her credibility…No. It is more important that we be together. It will work itself out somehow.

The Beast waited. Several minutes passed before he said, "Vera? What happened?...She did? You were…Right where you were working. I see. Well, you're welcome. I'll gladly be your guardian angel any day…No, I understand. I'll call you soon. Bye."

He folded his phone up and put it away, then looked from Xavier to Magneto. "Vera had been gardening in front of her house when I called. An elderly woman who lives up the street was out in her car. She's eighty-four or so. She mistook the gas pedal for the brake pedal, and ran up over the curb into Vera's yard, at about ninety miles an hour. She only stopped when she bottomed out her car on an ornamental rock and hit the neighbor's garage. Vera said the car went right through the shrubbery where she was pruning. If I hadn't called right then, she would have been killed.

"Who or what are Ms. Engstrom's voices?" McCoy finished, plaintively.

"We don't know." The Professor said, his voice very gentle. "I think—or thought—they were a form of precognition manifesting itself in an odd fashion. Erik thinks they are a form of racial memory working backward through time from her descendants. Storm believes they're minor gods or nature spirits. Ms. Engstrom doesn't know, and they aren't telling."

Erik took over. "You don't have the entire picture yet, Dr. McCoy. I came here because I have a personal interest, but I am staying here because if Ms. Engstrom is to succeed in her lawsuit she will need your help. And you will need my help, the help of everyone who follows me, and everyone I can recruit. If we are to see mutantkind achieve legal equality, we must all compromise. If we are to survive, we must work together.

"Because her voices say we have until her baby is due—which is the first week of April—to get the Mutant Registration Act rescinded and anti-discrimination laws enacted. Or we are facing certain extermination." Erik concluded. Let him put that in his pipe and smoke it!

The Beast looked at him, aghast. "By the first week of April? We'll be lucky to get a court date before then, let alone a ruling! That's only six and a half months away. How are we supposed to do it?"

"I have no idea." Grace stood in the door. "But they're saying not to worry about it, so I think we should just go ahead and get ready. What's the first thing that has to be done?"